Werner

When I was in high school, back at HV, I had heard a lot about the chemistry teacher. I heard he was mean, I heard he was hard, I heard he looked like an underweight Santa Claus and I also heard that if you did well in his chem class, then a college chem class would seem like a joke. He was Norwegian and wrote his name with an angstrom, but although Mr. Aase was not mean, his class was hard, and I learned so much that I never even bothered taking chemistry in college.

I have a lot of memories from that class. In fact, the first thing I remember from high school, is sitting down in the second row, on the right in a windowless, cinderblock room on the first day of school, a sophomore in a class of unknown juniors, and just staring at the pattern of off-white cinderblocks and contemplating the philosophical significance of the construction materials that we reserve for our schools and penitentiaries.

I also remember the labs and his careful instructions. "Do not," he said "light the magnesium on fire. If you do, don't look at it; it can do permanent damage to your eyes. I'll come over and extinguish it for you." Five minutes later, the lab was illuminated with the bright white light of burning magnesium, the guilty student, like a roadside dear, was staring intently at the hopping sparks, as one of the several junior 007's of the class dove and rolled behind a lab desk to protect his own vision.

So when a test came back, we passed them, we turned around, whispered, showed the grades to those sitting near to us and passed notes to those across the room. We had what turned out to be the first, second, and third students in the junior class - one of whom was the bright soul who ignited the magnesium - and the top two students in my class, the only sophomores taking chemistry. Yet I don't believe anyone ever got a hundred on a test - quizzes, sure, but never on a test. He prepared us well enough, but there was always so much information that we'd be sure to botch something.

However, there is one thing of which I have no memory at all. That is whatever Mr. Aase wrote on the overhead projector. Because at 7:29, when he cut the lights and started in with the green marker on the transparencies, I slip back in my desk, crossed my arms, and continued whatever dreams had been cut short by the incessant beeping of my alarm that morning. Usually, in this twilight state, I had some very interesting dreams, sometimes even incorporating some of the concepts that were being taught to me while I was asleep, when six point O-two times ten to the twenty-third somehow invaded my swirling experiences of spaceships and forests. On those rare occasions, when the lights went off and my eyes stayed open, I'd work out the lineup that we should play that afternoon in Greylock, usually featuring a midfield triangle and overlapping wing-backs getting forward like Roberto Carlos, who in those days was actually a decent player.

So as a teacher, I've tried to learn from my own memories of being taught. I'll make my instructions as clear as possible and try to anticipate all possible scenarios, but I'll know that they won't be followed and I'll be ready for the ensuing chaos. I'll have high expectations for my students, and I will prepare them to go on and study the material at a higher level, or use it in whatever else they may study. But my experiences in chemistry, and every other class in which the lights have been dimmed, have led me to discount the overhead projector as a method of disseminating information; perhaps they should be marketed as a less addictive alternative to Ambien. Even in college, I had on excellent professor who used the lcd projector and taught with powerpoints - she'd go through 50 or more slides per class, and I, without fail, regardless of how awake I felt upon entering the class, and no matter what stategies I tried I tried to stay awake (sitting in the front row, taking copious notes, poking myself with a mechanical pencil) fell asleep in that class every day. I take that back - there was one day, the entire semester, during which I did not fall asleep in that class. So I decided I would make good use of my whiteboard, or chalkboard as the case may be.

Throughout my summer school experience, I have seen examples of the overhead projector being used very well. In Spanish class, we labeled a photo of the President's face - boca, orejas, nariz, cerdo, etc. We used it adding fractions and finding probabilities and defining plot. Among our group of seven, I was probably one of only two who did not use the overhead, yet despite the fact that I have never been more tired that I have been this summer, I never once fell asleep when the overhead was humming (that's another thing I hate about them, that tranquilizing noise). So I am starting to re-think my aversion to projection. I feel like I ought to have tried it out last week, at least once, so that I could get a feel for it before I try it in front of my class. Using an LCD projector, which I've heard will be available at Big Delta High, might be the best option.